When Iseia Williams saw a flyer this month for a neighborhood event about gun violence, she wasn’t sure if she was ready to attend. Gunfire took her oldest son, Aasim Williams, a little over a year ago.
The flyer advertised the dedication of a ‘peace park’ just a block south of her house on Argyle Street.
“We’re just gonna have fun,” her younger son said when he brought home the flyer.
“It’s not just about having fun,” Williams said. “It’s about us, what we’re going through. We lost your brother.”
The dedication and block party put on by Mural Arts Philadelphia on July 20 celebrated the new public art installation “A Better World Is Possible.” It’s a circular object situated low to the ground, surrounded by wooden benches in a garden on Potter Street managed by long-time community organization The Simple Way.
Underneath the glass of the installation are deconstructed pieces of guns collected at a series of gun buybacks held over the last year as part of the project. Every 11 minutes, the pieces are illuminated in light for one minute. Each time signifies another life lost to gun violence in the U.S., per data from Johns Hopkins University.
“Those are not just statistics, they’re names,” said Shane Claiborne, Simple Way co-founder. “We are honoring those lives, but we’re also saying it doesn’t have to stay this way, and we can be the change we want to see in the world.”
From running Simple Way, Claiborne went on to found RAWTools Philadelphia, which repurposes firearms turned over by the community into more practical, household items. In a decade, Claiborne said they’ve broken down hundreds of guns.
“We say when we turn a gun into a garden tool, we’re declaring that all things can be made new,” he said. “And what’s true of metal is also true of our policies on gun violence, and it’s true of human hearts.”
When Claiborne was contacted by Mural Arts to work on a project alongside artist Jacob Hammes, he knew it was going to be the biggest installation he’d ever worked on.
For Hammes, the challenge was recognizing the culture surrounding guns without embracing it.
“People lust after these objects. It’s something very seductive,” he said. “How do I make something that doesn’t immediately allow you to lust after it and feel seduced by it?”
The art installation received praise from District Attorney Larry Krasner at a press conference he held in the garden the day after the dedication. There, Krasner announced charges against a man who was allegedly running a drug trafficking ring in the Kensington area. During the investigation, the DA’s office recovered nine firearms.
The garden project took shape over the course of April 2024. Mural Arts hosted a series of workshops every Saturday that month that invited community members to learn more about the impact of gun violence on youth in the city. Those impacted had space to share their stories in environments that included music, art, and a live blacksmithing demonstrations from Claiborne using some of the guns they obtained.
“That's a powerful experience,” said Hammes. “People end up kind of cathartically crying, cathartically processing grief when they're smashing up a firearm.”
Philadelphia has seen a significant decline in gun violence in the years since 2021, when the city recorded the highest number of homicides since the early 1990s.
In 2024, there were 1,081 shootings, 269 of which were homicides.
Aasim Williams, Iseia’s oldest son, was among the 2024 victims.
On April 12, 2024, Aasim was shot and killed in another part of Kensington. He was 20-years-old. Williams believes it was something Aasim’s friends were mixed up in that got him killed, but a court case surrounding the shooting, which injured another man, is ongoing.
“His friends that were doing wrong out here, he kept them on the right path,” she said.
Claiborne, of Simple Way, knew Aasim Williams as one of the many kids that would help out with the organization’s work in the community.
Iseia Williams said when her eldest son was a pre-teen he was always carrying boxes of goods, giving out lunches in the neighborhood, or cleaning out dilapidated houses alongside other teens working with the organization. Whatever the task, Aasim was always there, she said.
It was an adolescent sign of the young man Aasim would become, always willing to lend a hand, Williams said. On snow days, she can remember him getting up early to help neighbors shovel snow from their sidewalks. A straight-A student, Williams said Aasim graduated from high school in 2021 and then would typically hold two or three jobs at the same time, constantly offering his mother help with money at home.
He made music — still Williams’s favorite — and founded his own clothing line.
“He was so bright, such an inspiration to others,” said Williams. “He was a leader.”
Every day is a new milestone in her healing journey. She’s debated going to group grief counseling with other mothers who’ve lost their children to gun violence, but it’s still daunting to go alone. She still just misses Aasim.
“That was my partner-in-crime. It was just me and him for a long time,” said Williams. “I just miss everything about him.”
Now, she brings Aasim everywhere she goes. At the block party, she wore a shirt with selfies of herself and Aasim emblazoned across the front. After learning more about “A Better World” and Claiborne’s work, Williams expressed a desire to get involved.
“Show kids that there’s more to life than wanting to just be in the streets doing nothing,” she said.
As the ribbon was cut over the installation at the peace park, Williams was front and center helping to do the honors. When Claiborne fired up his forge to heat a gun barrel and let people hit it on an anvil, she was the first in line. With rain pouring down, she took five hearty hacks.
“That felt good,” Williams said.
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